Liftshare now allows you to book and pay online for your lift

Over the holidays we released a brand new booking and payment system. We believe the future of car-sharing will be cashless and have worked very hard during the last few months to deliver this feature to the community. We’re hugely excited indeed! And this is just the first version, which we we will soon improve with your feedback.

Now drivers can set their journeys to be paid ‘online’ (though we still keep the ‘cash’ option). By doing so, the journey will display a ‘Book’ button, which allows passengers to select how many seats they’d like to book and pay for them. Once a booking request is sent, the money is held in an escrow account until the journey has taken place.

To confirm that the journey happens, as soon as a booking is confirmed passengers will receive a PIN code that they can give to their driver at any point during the lift; this will then allow drivers to release payment. Alternatively if neither of the party cancel or say otherwise within a 72 hour window, the monies will be released automatically.

We believe the booking and payment system brings the following advantages:

For drivers, it prevents the awkwardness of asking to be paid at the end of the trip. Furthermore, if for any reason a passenger doesn’t show up, or cancels at the last minute, the driver still receives compensation.

For passengers, this new functionality entails that seats can be reserved in a few clicks. And any queries can be resolved using usual messaging.

Better communications. When a booking is confirmed we notify passengers and drivers of the each others verified mobile numbers, and the number of available seats gets automatically updated.

Payments are secured by Mango Pay, the leading payment provider for marketplaces in Europe. Their solution allows us to process micropayments between passengers and drivers, and also includes a fair refund policy.

You’ll find your lifts offered as a driver under the ‘Lifts offered’ tab, and your lifts booked as a passenger within the ‘Lifts booked’ section. Likewise you can track all your payments from your ‘Transactions’ section in your account.

We hope you like the new feature. In order for us to continue to improve and progress in-line with what our community wants we need feedback, so please feel free to get in touch and send your comments/opinions to support@liftshare.com.